Article abstract
Nature Neuroscience 10, 1601 - 1607 (2007)
Published online: 11 November 2007 | doi:10.1038/nn2009
Cortical interference effects in the cocktail party problem
Rajiv Narayan1,2, Virginia Best1,3, Erol Ozmeral1,3, Elizabeth McClaine1,2, Micheal Dent4, Barbara Shinn-Cunningham1,2,3 & Kamal Sen1,2
Abstract
Humans and animals must often discriminate between complex natural sounds in the presence of competing sounds (maskers). Although the auditory cortex is thought to be important in this task, the impact of maskers on cortical discrimination remains poorly understood. We examined neural responses in zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) field L (homologous to primary auditory cortex) to target birdsongs that were embedded in three different maskers (broadband noise, modulated noise and birdsong chorus). We found two distinct forms of interference in the neural responses: the addition of spurious spikes occurring primarily during the silent gaps between song syllables and the suppression of informative spikes occurring primarily during the syllables. Both effects systematically degraded neural discrimination as the target intensity decreased relative to that of the masker. The behavioral performance of songbirds degraded in a parallel manner. Our results identify neural interference that could explain the perceptual interference at the heart of the cocktail party problem.
- Hearing Research Center, Boston University, 44 Cummington Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, 44 Cummington Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
- Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems, Boston University, 677 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
- Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Park Hall Room 206, Buffalo, New York 14260-4110, USA.
Correspondence to: Kamal Sen1,2 e-mail: kamalsen@bu.edu
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